Mauro on Stewart

Tony Mauro at the National Law Journal has another piece up from his digging through the Potter Stewart papers, this time on the Justice’s friendships with President George H.W. Bush and Professor Larry Tribe, and their thoughts about what could have been.

Stewart died in 1986, so he never saw his friend George make it to the White House in 1989 – but Mauro finds that he did follow his friend’s 1980 Presidential run and VP nomination quite closely:

Stewart clearly had a keen interest in Bush’s electoral fortunes, collecting news clippings about Bush testing the waters for a 1980 run for the presidency, which turned into a campaign for vice president with Ronald Reagan at the top of the ticket. Stewart corresponded with Christopher Phillips, apparently a strategist who was urging Bush to stress his moderate views and not give in to pressure from the right that was fueling Reagan’s success. “My great fear is that even if the views stated in your memorandum are fully understood and completely accepted, the house may be irreparably late,” Stewart wrote. Stewart even shared his views with Powell, who wrote Stewart, “These are views you and I have shared. It may indeed be too late now.”

Indeed, for the Court, it was too late. Under Reagan, Stewart and Powell’s moderate conservatism–political and jurisprudential–began its decline towards today’s near-extinction.

And from Stewart’s “Tribe” file:

In May 1969, after Nixon appointed Warren Burger as chief justice, Tribe wrote a letter to Stewart mourning the demise of a shared hope: that Stewart would be elevated to the position instead. “I had so hoped things would turn out differently,” Tribe wrote. “For you — and for the country — I am sorry.” Stewart’s reply note did not deny the ambition.

This note from Tribe seems at odds with The Brethren‘s prologue (see pp. 10-13), in which Woodward and Armstrong write that Stewart declined President Nixon’s overtures to elevate Stewart to Chief Justice. Perhaps Stewart, now known as a significant source for The Brethren, fed Woodward and Armstrong this story for pride’s sake. Perhaps Tribe did not know about this meeting. Or perhaps Tribe was lamenting the underlying reasons why Stewart felt compelled to decline the President’s offer – “why”s that may have been lost forever in the fires Tribe told me about at the Kagan hearings and reiterated to Mauro:

2 Responses

I wonder if there is enough now — even if many think the papers won’t add too much in some ways — for a full fledged bio. He was after all an important mentor for Justice Stevens and as a ‘centrist’ provides an interesting perspective.

It took about 30 years for the papers to be opened. It will take 50 years for Souter’s papers to be released. Something to look forward to, I guess.

[…] First One @ One First’s Mike Sacks reprints excerpts from an article discussing Justice Potter Stewart’s recently released papers, pointing out a possible tension between the papers and The Brethren. […]